The Grimoire Stone
by ShullieQ
Summary: Four months after their return from the ordeal with the Shadow Hunters, Itachi and Deidara's lives have returned to as normal as it can get in a house of vampires and werewolves, but when a newcomer returns to tip the balance of power in the local witch coven, Itachi and Deidara must set out again to help their friends.


A/N: Hey, so finally, right lol This is the second part of Exquisite Desire, if you haven't read that fic, I don't think you need to to understand this story, but it's a lot of fun (I think) so you should give it a try. Thanks to everyone who kept requesting a part two, I hope you like it!

Shul

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_The flowers were in full bloom, their sweet scent pushed through the hills by a cool spring breeze. Stalks of wild orchids, roses, lavender, sage, and flowering plants with unknown names towered over him as he lay in their midst, staring up at the white, fluffy cloud floating by, much closer here on the mountain side. It was peaceful and relaxing. He had dreamed of this place many times before, but it had always been someone else's memories; the real thing was even more surreal than a memory. He reached out and ran his fingers against the stalks of a wild lavender plant and held his hands up to his nose to inhale the relaxing scent. He could lay up here for days and be content, under the shade of a young birch tree; he could take a nap and awaken only to see new clouds._

_A small voice called out suddenly, drawing his attention back down to the earth. After staring at the great blueness of the sky for so long, the greenness of the earth with its grass and trees and wildness dazzled his eyes with the intensity of their Aliveness. It took a moment for his eyes to be able to distinguish any color other than green as he sat up and rubbed them to help them recover quickly. The voice sounded like a lost child, but what child would be up on the mountain this high all alone? He stood and began his search, calling out gently, not wanting to scare the frightened sounding child._

_Finally, against the outcrop of rock where the mountain continued up, he spotted a bit of color that wasn't a flower and knelt down a peaceable distance away. "Hello," he said gently. "What's wrong? Are you lost? Are you hurt?"_

_The child looked no older than three or four, rubbing their eyes with their small fists as they sniffed woefully. They seemed to have wedged themselves between the rocks to hide from something. He held his arms out for the child who crept forward after a moment and buried their face into his chest as he held them. "Where's momma?"_

_Suddenly, he knew he was dreaming and the beautiful plants around him became all wrong. The words that came out were in a language he didn't know, yet the dream had both heard the foreign words and translated for him. The place hadn't become dangerous, but something seemed suddenly not right. The plants were watching them with, the flowers all turned towards him as if he was the sun, their gaze intense and aggressive. The child was warm and terrified in his arms, so he stood, holding them tight. "Who are you?" he asked softly._

_The child clung to him, sniffling and clutching his clothes. "I'm scared," they cried. "I don't know where I am. I don't know where I am. I'm scared. I want my momma!"_

_"Don't worry, I'll take you home," he paused and turned to give the mountain his back to take the long walk home with the plants following his movements, but froze, eyes staring wide at the valley below. He shouldn't be able to see the great beautiful old castle that was his home so clearly and so large, but the dream made it so. In fact, in this dream state, he could even see the normally invisible barrier bought from the magical witches to protect the land the castle stood on. It looked like a great crystal dome encasing it, sheltering it and shining like a snow globe coated in diamonds. And beyond… he clutched the child protectively, his heart racing._

_A darkness like a storm was rising in the distance, blood red and slowly drawing ever closer, reaching for the city, the farms, the suburbs. He didn't know what it was, but it was dangerous, and he had to get home before it engulfed him. He wouldn't survive if he was caught outside when the storm reached the mountain. "Don't worry," he repeated to the child. "I'll keep you safe."_

_The child lifted their head, staring up at him with large, heavy lidded, and emotionless honey brown eyes. "I'm so hungry," the child murmured in an older, familiar voice._

Itachi gasped as he sat up in bed, heart racing.

There was no child. No darkness. Just a dream. He exhaled slowly, pushing the sheets off himself and swung his legs over the side of the bed, feeling the plush rug under his toes as he padded over to the window, pushing open the curtain and climbed up onto the window seat to turn the latch so he could open the window, letting in the crisp spring air. He breathed in deeply to calm down, sniffing up the spring, the rich earth, the early flowers that were much more natural than the flowers in his dream. The window, embedded in stone several stories above the ground, offered a pristine view of the wild German landscape that stretched out towards the north as hills of grass and spring bulbs pushing up and the trees clustered in secure forests that hid its wildlife's secrets. Far in the distance, he could see the mountain in his dream, close, but not nearly as close as he had seen it in the dream. He had climbed up the mountain only a week ago with Wes, the head gardener of the estate who wanted to show those willing to take the hike the spring blooming wild and free. Itachi had never climbed up a mountain before, not even Mount Fuji even when he was in Japan, and though it had taken the troop of humans and several werewolves and their children nearly five hours to hike to the top, he had found it a wonder land straight out of a picture book or dream.

The dream.

He exhaled slowly and searched inward, though it wasn't that difficult to find the familiar and comforting path to the other body that shared a piece of his soul. His undead, vampiric partner would be in his Suntime death, but he would always be able to find Deidara and speak to him mind to mind. Itachi and Deidara were Silluetu, someone who has shared souls, melding them together until they were nearly one person in two separate bodies. The exchange had been painful, but after the pieces of their souls had found comfortable nooks in their new homes, Itachi felt it had been worth it.

Deidara was in Sam's room and he was about to pull away, not wanting to disturb them when he felt Deidara reach out and clutch onto his thoughts to hold him. _'You're up early, un,'_ came Deidara's thoughts in his mind. Not long ago, ten in the morning wasn't very early, but since he came to live with vampires, waking at ten was much like waking at four in the morning.

_'Yeah, sorry… I was just wondering where you were,'_ Itachi told him, leaning on the window sill so that he could look down at the walled gardens. He couldn't see anyone working at the moment from this angle. _'I had a strange dream…'_

He felt Deidara reach out to him more and smiled, opening their connection wider so that the vampire could feel the morning spring time he could no longer touch without pain. _'A nightmare?'_ came the concerned question after a few moments of happiness.

_'Not really, just strange…'_ Itachi replied, relaying as much of the dream as possible. The child that had been horribly familiar, but younger than Itachi had known him. Sasori, Deidara's Maker, the narcissistic psychopath who had manipulated their lives only a handful of months ago. But he had been much older and more terrifying than the scared, crying child in his dream and no longer human enough to feel warm to the touch.

_'Sasori as a human kid, un? Did you eat something weird last night?'_

Itachi gave a slight roll of his eyes that Deidara couldn't see. _'The thing coming towards us just feels…'_

_'Just a dream, Itachi~'_ came the playful croon.

A small knock on his door brought his attention back to his bedroom. He paused looking back at the door, smiling as he waited with his feet swinging back to the rug. A few whispers sounded and giggles followed. Reaching out, he knocked four times on the window and several pairs of hands mimicked the knocking excitedly with another burst of giggles. Smiling, he dropped down on the floor and went to the door, opening it with a raised eyebrow to stare down at the beaming, giggling werewolf children who would wait and listen carefully for when he had gotten up.

"Guten Morgen, shouldn't you be doing school work?" he said to them in German and they all cried the greeting back to him, then ran shrieking with childish glee back down the hallway.

He returned to his room to change his clothes and walked down the chilled stone hallways towards the kitchen and breakfast, trying to ignore the feeling of dread the dream had left him yet. Not so much dreaming of Sasori as a human child, but the darkness approaching the castle. What felt like only a few weeks and not months ago, both Itachi and Deidara suffered at the hands of the Shadow Hunters who had believed that the soul union between the two of them to be an abomination. Itachi had been born a Shadow Hunter, but after the massacre of his family by the Shadow Hunters for seeking peace between the paranormal and Shadow Hunters, he had been raised as a human in central Tokyo living in foster homes and orphanages until he was able to secure a scholarship to high school that allowed him to live in a closet sized apartment on his own, squandering to live until Deidara found him and brought him back to Germany to live with him. The Shadow Hunters had tried and failed to separate them and, though Deidara wanted to have another adventure, Itachi was enjoying his life spent studying in his library and playing with the small hoard of werewolf pups who hadn't yet reached the age in which the change would come to them.

Halfway to the kitchen, he met Rose, nine years old and eldest of the werewolf children – the only one who had completed her change, who was coming out of her room, dressed in a light blue sun dress and beaming at him. "You're up so early! Want to come study and eat lunch with us!" she said, clutching his arm.

"Am I invited?" he asked her, just to be polite. The adult werewolves had told him that he was always welcome at their tables after he had saved their pups from the Shadow Hunter invasion the year before.

"Always~" Rose beamed, leading him through the maze of hallways to the southern wing of the castle where the visiting pack, who had come from Denmark to seek the protection Deidara's castle offered, was living and the children who all jumped up from where they were scribbling away at the table while their parents had already started making lunch distracted him from the uneasy feeling the dream had given him.


End file.
